Tag: e-commerce

Talabia, Free Online Food Home Delivery Service

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TalabiaTalabia is a new home delivery company that was launched in Kuwait in December 2007, initially using offline call center services, with the objective of providing a free home delivery service for the leading food products in Kuwait, making it more convenient for consumers to order fresh and frozen food products from the comfort of their own homes and have them delivered to their doorstep.

In April 2008, they took their service online, through a site available in both Arabic and English, bringing their home shopping experience to all connected households in Kuwait.

The site is very well designed, simple and easy to use; it incorporates a well organized and categorized product catalog, making it straightforward to find the products you’re looking for, add them to your shopping cart and place your order; also giving you the possibility to specify your preferred delivery time.

Talabia screenshot

Talabia currently delivers products from leading food brands including Sadia, Hilal, Lamb Weston, Gulfa, Hana and Hayat; and they plan to continue adding more quality brands and products to cover more of the consumers’ needs.

The Talabia website was developed by Olive Interactive.

# Talabia

SouqElArab, Online Social Shopping Portal

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SouqElArab

SouqElArab is a growing Arab online social marketplace; It offers its visitors a social shopping experience whereby they can network with like minded people and do some shopping at the same time.

Their shopping experience is based on users’ recommendations and feedback; Visitors can rate and review products and come together to form a community based on their hobbies and interests.

SouqElArab provides a platform for vendors to bring their product catalogs online and easily start selling their products without the fuss of having to create their own web presences. Suppliers from over 15 countries are currently working with SouqElArab.

Through these different suppliers, SouqElArab offers a large variety of products from Books, Magazines, Music, Movies, e-Downloads and Software, to Food and delicacies, Health Care and Beauty products, Kids’ Toys and Electronics, to Hookahs, Shisha, Clothing, Antiquities, Art, and other Middle Eastern cultural products.

SouqElArab screenshot

The website is available in both English and Arabic; with French, Persian and Afrikaans coming soon, aiming to expand both the user and supplier base.

SouqElArab Inc., founded by Fadi F. Dababneh, is the company that runs the website; with offices in USA, Jordan and Lebanon.

# SouqElArab

CarDaleel, Online Arab Auto Trading Service

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CarDaleelCarDaleel, is a newly launched service based in Jordan, that aims to be an online auto trading hub for people all around the Arab world.

Users can list their cars for sale, including all necessary technical details about them, as well as their state and age, to make them easier to search for and find; photos of the cars can also be included.
On the other hand, users looking to buy a car can go through the cars listed on the website, by country, by make and model, or use the advanced search to find cars based on different criteria of their choice; once they find a car they’re interested in, they can directly contact the seller through the site.

Auto-dealers can also use the service to list their available cars for sale directly on the site, therefore adding a new sales channel to their business.

The interface is in Arabic only for the time being, but an English version is planned soon. The service is completely free for all users, both individuals and auto-dealers.

CarDaleel screenshot

CarDaleel was founded and launched in Jordan by Khaled Salah, Khamis Siksek and Hamzeh Abu Zakham.

# CarDaleel

SouqElArab Partners With Yamli For Better User Experience

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SouqElArab
Yamli

Press Release: SouqElArab.com partners with Yamli.com to offer a unique user experience for Arabs
Amman, May 6, 2008

The Arab social Web shopping portal, SouqElArab.com has partnered with Yamli.com, which offers tools that allows easy access and expand the Arabic Web, to offer Arabs the facility that allows Arabic speakers to write Arabic using English alphabet.

Embedded within the SouqElArab.com Web site is Yamli’s API technology that allows the user to easily access the vast product lines without the need of an Arabic keyboard. The technology has been implemented in the search engine, as well as the use of User Names for the Networking facility offered, and for placing reviews, messages and text fields. The technology is simply “Write in Arabic – Type it the way you say it” as Yamli creators put it.

“I am really excited for this partnership and looking forward for more collaboration with SouqElArab.com. Our mission at Yamli is to empower the Arabic language on the Web and we firmly believe that in unity and collaboration we can and will achieve our goal” says Yamli.com Co-Founder, Habib Haddad.

Further to this facility, numerous co-operations and partnerships are in process of implementation to better serve both companies in terms of exposure, accessibility and branding.

Fadi F. Dababneh, Founder & CEO of SouqElArab Inc. added: “This new technology has started to revolutionise the Arabic language’s use on the Internet. More and more Web services are offering this technology from Yamli.com to better serve and understand the needs of its user-base. I believe nothing like this has come along since the first Arabic e-mail service was offered in the late 1990’s.”

Language Analytics LLC, which created and operates Yamli.com is an Internet startup based in Cambridge, MA, (USA) specializes in smart transliteration technologies for Arabic and other languages.

SouqElArab.com, operated by SouqElArab Inc., is a growing Arab on-line marketplace in the making. It offers visitors a social shopping experience whereby they can network with like-minded people and shop at the same time. The shopping experience is based on members’ recommendations and feedback, where visitors rate and review products and come together to form a community based on their hobbies, interests and traits.

# SouqElArab, Yamli

Halal Exchange, Marketplace For Global Halal Trade

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Halal Exchange, a unique e-commerce platform aimed at facilitating global Halal trade, will make UAE the preferred hub of the $2.1 trillion-a-year global Halal market (according to Malaysian government estimates in 2007).

With UAE ideally positioned through its infrastructure and telecommunication network and its growing significance as one of the largest re-export centers in the world, Halal Exchange will facilitate the growth of Halal trade, both within the Middle East as well as globally.

Powered by vLinx, a web-based solution, which addresses the challenges of global sourcing, the Halal Exchange makes the costly and complex import-export process as simple as doing business across the street. The Exchange will provide a seamless business platform for the larger retailers and distributors as well as the small and medium-sized companies, which are currently responsible for nearly 80 per cent of the global Halal transactions.

Headquartered in the UAE, Halal Exchange is a joint venture between vLinx Inc. and RAK Investment Authority. The service is free of charge� and accessible to registered clients anywhere in the world.

# Site: Halal Exchange
# Source: Mena Report

B2C E-commerce Study In Four Arab Countries

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A recent analysis by the Arab Advisors Group of e-commerce expenditure in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Lebanon was released recently after studies based on major online and face to face surveys conducted by Arab Advisors Group during 2007.

Total number of e-commerce users in these four countries exceeded 5.1 million people in 2007.

The UAE’s e-commerce users penetration was the highest among the countries studied. The UAE’s e-commerce users’ penetration stood at 25.1%. Saudi Arabia (14.3%) and Kuwait (10.7%) followed while Lebanon had the lowest penetration of e-commerce users with 1.6% of the total population.

The UAE also had the highest average amount spent per capita over one year. As for Lebanon, it had the lowest e-commerce expenditure per capita per year and per month due to a low penetration of e-commerce users in the country. However, Lebanon registered the highest e-commerce expenditure per e-commerce users.

# Press Release: Arab Advisors Group

Mezed, Product Auctions Differently

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MezedMezed is a Tunisian auction site that recently surfaced into the arena of online startups in Tunisia.

A number of Tunisian websites have already attempted to try and push through the idea of online auctions in Tunisia, get it popular, and attempt to make some money out of it. Examples off the top of my head are sites like: MoncefBay and EchriBay.
A lot of these services hang on for a while before fading away into Tunisian internet history. It just seems that the auction model just hasn’t taken off and worked up to now, for one reason or another.

Websites that approach the whole buying/selling thing through small classified ads seem to be doing a little better maybe, but nothing big enough to come close to real e-commerce yet.

Back to Mezed, they take on a new and different approach to the whole auctions system, taking out the sellers and auctioning off partner products themselves. Their system revolves solely around buyers competing to get the auctioned product at a cheap price.

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